Oldest Applied Geometry Engraving Discovered on 3,700-year-old Babylonian Tablet

Si.427 is a hand tablet from 1900-1600 BC, created by an Old Babylonian surveyor. (UNSW Sydney)
Si.427 is a hand tablet from 1900-1600 BC, created by an Old Babylonian surveyor. (UNSW Sydney)
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Oldest Applied Geometry Engraving Discovered on 3,700-year-old Babylonian Tablet

Si.427 is a hand tablet from 1900-1600 BC, created by an Old Babylonian surveyor. (UNSW Sydney)
Si.427 is a hand tablet from 1900-1600 BC, created by an Old Babylonian surveyor. (UNSW Sydney)

An Australian mathematician has discovered what may be the oldest known example of applied geometry, on a 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet. Known as Si.427, the tablet bears a field plan measuring the boundaries of some land, according to The Guardian.

The tablet dates from the Old Babylonian period between 1900 and 1600 BCE and was discovered in the late 19th century in what is now Iraq. It had been housed in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum before Dr. Daniel Mansfield from the University of New South Wales tracked it down.

Mansfield and Norman Wildberger, an associate professor at University of New South Wales, had previously identified another Babylonian tablet as containing the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table. At the time, they speculated the tablet was likely to have had some practical use, possibly in surveying or construction.

That tablet, Plimpton 322, described right-angle triangles using Pythagorean triples: three whole numbers in which the sum of the squares of the first two equals the square of the third – for example, 32 + 42 = 52.

“You don’t just accidentally come up with trigonometry, you’re usually doing something practical,” Mansfield said. Plimpton 322 set him on a quest to find other tablets from the same period that contained Pythagorean triples, eventually leading him to Si.427.

“Si.427 is about a piece of land that’s being sold,” Mansfield said. In the cuneiform script, with its characteristic wedge-shaped indentations, the tablet describes a field containing marshy areas, as well as a threshing floor and nearby tower.

The rectangles depicting the field have opposite sides of equal length, suggesting surveyors of that time period had devised a way to create perpendicular lines more accurately than before, according to Mansfield.

“Much like we would today, you’ve got private individuals trying to figure out where their land boundaries are, and the surveyor comes out but instead of using a piece of GPS equipment, they use Pythagorean triples,” he explained.



Japan's Space One Kairos Rocket Fails Minutes after Liftoff

The solid-fuel Kairos rocket by Tokyo-based startup Space One is launched at the company's Spaceport Kii launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture on December 18, 2024. (Photo by JIJI PRESS / AFP) / Japan OUT
The solid-fuel Kairos rocket by Tokyo-based startup Space One is launched at the company's Spaceport Kii launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture on December 18, 2024. (Photo by JIJI PRESS / AFP) / Japan OUT
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Japan's Space One Kairos Rocket Fails Minutes after Liftoff

The solid-fuel Kairos rocket by Tokyo-based startup Space One is launched at the company's Spaceport Kii launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture on December 18, 2024. (Photo by JIJI PRESS / AFP) / Japan OUT
The solid-fuel Kairos rocket by Tokyo-based startup Space One is launched at the company's Spaceport Kii launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture on December 18, 2024. (Photo by JIJI PRESS / AFP) / Japan OUT

Japan's Space One terminated the flight of its Kairos small rocket shortly after liftoff on Wednesday, marking the end of its second attempt in nine months to become the country's first company to deliver a satellite to space.
It is the latest in a series of recent setbacks for Japanese rocket development, even as the government looks to boost the domestic space industry and is targeting 30 rocket launches annually by the early 2030s, Reuters reported.
Authorities are pushing to make Japan Asia's space transportation hub in what they hope will be an 8 trillion yen ($52 billion) space industry.
The second Kairos flight, which only lasted about 10 minutes, was terminated because "the achievement of its mission would be difficult", Space One said in an email to reporters.
Live images from the local Wakayama prefecture government showed the 18-meter (59 ft) solid-propellant rocket blasting off from Spaceport Kii in western Japan at 11:00 a.m. (0200 GMT) but losing stability in its trajectory as it ascended.
Five small satellites, including one from the Taiwan Space Agency, were on board the rocket headed into sun-synchronous orbit roughly 500 km (311 miles) above the Earth's surface.
Tokyo-based Space One was founded in 2018 by Canon Electronics, IHI's aerospace unit, construction firm Shimizu and a state-backed bank, with the goal of launching 20 small rockets a year by 2029 to capture growing satellite launch demand.
At its debut flight in March, Kairos, carrying a Japanese government satellite, exploded five seconds after launch.
Inappropriate flight settings triggered the rocket's autonomous self-destruct system even though no issues were found in its hardware, Space One later said.
A lack of domestic launch options has seen emerging Japanese space startups such as radar satellite maker iQPS and debris mitigator Astroscale tapping on SpaceX's rideshare missions or leading small rocket provider Rocket Lab .
Recent Japanese rocket projects have also faced other setbacks.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) postponed the debut flight of the new solid-fuel launcher Epsilon S after its engine combustion test failed last month for a second time.
JAXA's larger liquid-propellant rocket H3 also failed at its inaugural launch in March 2023 but has succeeded in three flights this year, winning orders from clients such as French satellite giant Eutelsat.
In 2019, Interstellar Technologies became the first Japanese firm to send a rocket into space without a satellite payload, but its orbital launcher Zero is still under development.